IWLA Sportsman's Chapter

06/14/2026

Happy Flag Day!

06/13/2026

The box turtle crossing your driveway may have been alive before your house was built. The luna moth on the screen door has roughly a week — she emerged with no mouth, and the adult life is just long enough to find a mate and lay eggs.

Same yard. Same evening. A hundred-year gap between them.

The opossum is the one most people don't expect. Fifty teeth, venom immunity, one of the toughest immune systems in the yard — and she lives two to three years. Burns bright. Burns fast.

🌿 The bat in the attic has been there for decades. The crow on the roof remembers your face from fifteen years ago. The heron at the pond has fished the same water since before your kids were born.

Then there's the firefly — a year or two underground as a larva, eating slugs in the dark, glowing where nobody sees her. She emerges for a few weeks of light. That's it.

The chart covers fourteen species. The range runs from one week to over a century — all of them within earshot of the same back door.

The smallest lives burn the brightest 🐾

06/03/2026

General meeting tonight 7pm
Last meeting before summer break. If you want to join before we return in September please attend.

05/27/2026

Who’s visiting your mud?

The print in the garden bed after last night's rain belongs to something specific. Size, shape, and location narrow it to one species every time.

The raccoon print looks like a tiny human hand — five fingers, pressed flat. The opossum print has a thumb on the hind foot that no other local mammal has.

🌿 The ones most people misread:

Fox tracks look like small dog tracks — but foxes walk in a single-file line. Every print lands in the same path. Dogs wander.

Cottontail tracks run in a Y-pattern — the two large hind prints land ahead of the two small front prints. The pattern repeats in perfect sets.

The snapping turtle leaves a wide track with a central drag line down the middle where the tail drags. That line is the diagnostic — no other animal leaves it.

🐾 The best time to check is the morning after rain. Fresh mud holds prints for hours. Garden beds, pond edges, and sandy paths show them clearest.

Ten species. Ten prints. All of them walked through the yard last night 🐾

05/25/2026

05/19/2026

What a great way to end our youth club before the club summer break. This month we did a stream class with the kids. They found all kinds of critters.
Youth club resumes in September.

04/27/2026

Thank you everyone for attending our annual fishing Derby. We had over 50 kids and the fish were biting. Share your pictures below.
Interested in joining the IWLA next meeting is 7pm May 6th youth meeting 6:30 May 18.